Maximizing the Value and Effectiveness of Your Pay-Per-Click Campaign
We always want maximum value and profits for our pay-per-click
advertising budget. But how do we effectively maximize that for
value and profits? We will have to really consider the factors
that are affecting out sales and target market.
First, familiarizing yourself with your website’s conversion
rate
What is the percentage that a sale will be made with 100 unique
visitors to your website? Let’s assume that only 1 visitor will
make a purchase. That means your website has a conversion rate
of 1%.
Although the traffic quality that you get from a pay-per-click
search engine may differ from that of a traditional search
engine or any other advertising measures, familiarizing with
your website’s conversion rate will definitely give a better
gauge to how much you are going to bid than a calculated guess.
Let’s take this for an example: assume your conversion rate is
1%. You’ll need 100 clicks to your site before you can make 1
sale. Convert it and its $10 if your bid is Overture’s minimum
bid of $0.10 per click.
Using this as a gauge, you can estimate if your advertising cost
is going to be covered back by that 1 sale. If so, then would
you be willing to increase your budget to increase your clicks
and sales? Will this make you a bigger profit or a loss?
You will be able to use this to test out your marketing strategy
and thus maximizing the profits while cutting down on costs.
Second, are you using the right keyword phrases for the search?
The key to more sales is to target the right market with the
right product. On the internet, using the right keyword phrases
for the visitors to search for your website is absolutely
crucial.
This is because if you use the wrong keyword phrases, you ended
up with lots of unwanted traffic that costs you your bidding
money. But if you use a keyword phrase that no one searches for
it, then even worse, you ended up with no traffic at all.
So using the right keyword phrases will determine the type and
quality of your visitors that will indirectly influences your
sales and income. Always use the Overture’s Search Term
Suggestion Tool to help you in finding the right keyword phrases
for your business:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
Third, finding the best bid position for the greatest value
Most people tend to bid for the #1 position in the search
listing for their keywords. Though the top 3 listings will
definitely get the most traffic but you can still get good
quality traffic from links in the first 30 listings.
Some people even claim that these visitors are more qualified as
they took more time browsing through the description and
choosing the most appropriate for them before they click on it.
Another great thing to take advantage is the gaps between each
individual bids.
For example, at the time of this writing, Overture’s listings
showed the following bids for the search term “fashion”:
#1 position - $0.76 #2 position - $0.47 #3 position - $0.46 #4
position - $0.45 #5 position - $0.40 #6 position - $0.39 #7
position - $0.32
As the bids are separated by a few cents differences but you can
still save up quite a bit on bidding money if you know. Let’s
see, if you wanted #1 position then you would have to bid for
$0.77, that’s quite a big bid but if you were to settle for a #2
position instead, you ended up paying only $0.48. That’s a
savings of 29 cents!
Then if you were to bid for #7 position for a mere 33 cents
only, although this may not seems very much but comparing the
difference of bidding position #1 and #7, you can end up saving
a whopping $44 for every 100 clicks! This savings can be better
utilized after you have decided whether if you should pay the
extra cost for that position.
Though pay-per-click search engines are not the cheapest method
to advertise your online business, but they can be a great
addition to your whole marketing strategy. Remember it is how
much return on the investment that really counts rather than the
amount of money you are willing to fork out.
